You ever seen a dog chase its tail? It’s both entertaining and maddening at the same time. On one of our free Firestick apps we have a Fail Army channel and it’s a hoot to watch. It’s basically an A.F.V. type presentation but with more crashes, falls and well, fails. The other day they had a clip of a dog chasing his tail and man, he just would not give up. He was whipping around in a circle, every fiber of his being trying to catch that elusive tail that was always just out of reach. The funny thing about this process is the repetition. It just goes on an on, kinda like the Energizer bunny.
It makes me think about the lunch that Margie and I had just yesterday after church. (No there was not a dog at lunch) God has blessed us in an amazingly deep way in the class He has allowed us to partner with at Southcliff. For the last year we, as a class, have bonded over the deep study of God’s Word, in prayer over great needs, in celebrating great praises and well, just living lives together as sons and daughters of a good, good Father. As a result, the blessings flow within the class. When you love someone dearly in Christ, you bless them, it’s what you do.
Once a month we have a class lunch and we rotate to a different local restaurant each month. Yesterday was Saltgrass, what a tasty treat. As Marge and I walked in one of the dear couples grabbed me and slid a Saltgrass gift card into my hand and said they wanted to bless us with lunch. Completely unexpected and so appreciated, a few tears sneaked their way to my eyes. After enjoying lunch and rousing fellowship around a Bruce Wayne sized table with 25 people, Margie and I looked for our check to arrive so we could use the just received card. The check never came. Another dear couple had taken care of it. This time it was harder for me to hold back the tears that overflowed their ducts. You see, it wasn’t necessarily the meal, even though it was greatly appreciated, it was the beauty of seeing God’s cycle of goodness at work. You see, when you are blessed, your heart will seek to bless. When you receive blessings, you can’t but help but give away blessings of your own. It’s the cycle of Jesus Christ at work.
Today in Deuteronomy we see a chapter that if you’re not careful, can easily escape you. The entire chapter reads like a weird grocery list as God defines what His people can and can’t eat. It’s chapters like these that can easily be dismissed as lacking meaning and relevance to us today in 2020. But God has a message for us is in every sentence and paragraph of His Word, you just gotta go digging. You see, there is no excess or fluff in God’s Word, it’s all good stuff, it’s just that sometimes you might have to mine for it a little harder. Today, at the very end of the chapter, lying there like a little lost golden nugget a few feet under the soil, is this gem:
“At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites, who have no allotment or inheritance of their own, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be filled, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
Here is a beautiful picture of that dog chasing his tail. A beautiful picture of a flow chart of the blessings of God. All blessings first flow down from God. Love, goodness, mercy, grace, wisdom, hope, food, money, purpose, clothing, home, guidance, health and on and on. From those blessings His children reap a harvest. In our passage we see God first bless His people with abundant food and then they, in turn, will bless the priests that serve them (Levites) and the less fortunate orphans, widows and visitors to their land. You witness in this passage the cycle of God’s blessings; He blesses you so that you can bless others.
God gifts us with His Holy Spirit and when we are obedient to Him, the blessings fall upon us like an unexpected rain shower. As these blessings penetrate the heart that holds Christ, the blessings will not remain but will be sent onward. You must realize that a blessing is not to be held for it has a future purpose. It has a purpose to bless others. To be blessed is to then bless others.
In the essence of the energizer tail-chasing dog, you must seek to bless as you have been blessed. If you feel like the world is beating you up and you have no blessings, you first must find them. I encouraged a friend the other day to start a list. A daily list of blessings in their life. To write down 10 different things every day that are blessings from God and then repeat the exercise for 21 days consecutively. You see, satan’s goal is for us to not see and fully recognize the blessings of God. He desires us to see God’s blessings as something that we are owed. What is a blessing directly from God, satan desires us to see as things that we somehow deserve, have earned on our own, or that the world is obligated to give us. Folks, the miracle of God is that He gives, and He doesn’t have to. Every blessing in your life today is given out of the abundant goodness, mercy and grace of God. As sinners before a righteous God, we deserve nothing but His judgement and condemnation for bringing sin to His Holy altar. But praise God, as we call upon the precious name of Jesus, He blesses us for loving and worshipping His Son. And as a result, blessings flow into our undeserving lives.
Today as you move through the day, you have a mental and spiritual shift to embrace. Move yourself from the natural sin state of an internal perspective to one that is a God based external perspective. Don’t walk through this world today seeking to be blessed, but rather to bless. Look at everyone in your life today as someone that you can bless. It might be as simple as letting someone in front of you in traffic today with a gracious wave or it could be as big as the pastor in my hometown recently giving one of his flock his kidney to save her life. You see as we move through this world today seeking to bless rather than be blessed, a miracle of God will happen. You will not find your heart empty of blessings. Rather you will see the hand of God working as your heart will be filled to overflowing as God refills you with blessings as quick as you can give them out. You can’t out give God and you can’t out bless Him either. You see, the more you bless others, the more He will bless you. And folks, this is not a new idea or a new concept, we learn it directly from our Savior Jesus Christ. He came to bless us at the cost of His very life upon a Cross. As a result of His blessings we can today have the promise of an eternity in Heaven with Him.
If we, the children of God, hope to bless like Jesus today, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s get busy and bless the world around us. We have the best example to follow that the world has ever seen.
“Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Matthew 20:28
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